1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the storage and distribution of content over a network.
2. Related Art
Advances in telecommunications network communication and switching are moving ahead with great speed. However, distributing files between network locations can take significant amounts of time using conventional techniques. Transmission flow can be inconsistent. For example, when delivering large content, such as a media file of a movie, to a user, unacceptable delays in transmission can occur.
One conventional technique to avoid delay in presenting content to a user is to replicate copies of the content at various locations in the network. Such replication may reduce delay for a user near an available copy, but requires an inordinate amount of storage space. Management overhead is also increased. A management application is needed so that administrators and/or users can manage the replicated copies of content. Storage administrators must further be in constant alert because if any site runs out of storage, a new content replication will fail.
Other techniques include application level proxy caching, such as, web caching and streaming caching. Such caching does not require the deployment of unmanageable amount storage but only solves the problem for limited cases when content has already been cached in at the requesting locations. If a user request for a content that is not cached, the content has to be retrieved from the core, and the delay may be unacceptable. Another major limitation of a caching approach is that it is limited to one specific application.
What is needed is a method and system for storage and distribution of content over a network that can eliminate long haul transfer latency and does not require 100% replication to all locations. A method and system for storage and distribution of content is needed which provides intelligent storage management based on usage and location transparent access, and which is application agnostic, that is, is can be used with different types of applications.